


Colour of Hope

by altairattorney



Category: Monument Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Ida's Red Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 08:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4617894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ida always loved regular shapes, and the dream reminds her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colour of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Ida’s Red Dream, and the natural conclusion to a series of three, after the one-shots I wrote about the original game and Forgotten Shores. I meant to post this to celebrate the Android release, but I didn’t make it. Renewed thanks to Ustwo Games for their extraordinarily inspired creation.

Sleep catches Ida by surprise under a red pinnacle.

With her energy drained by the long walk, she is fast imprisoned. The shape she just gave back, with its eternal spinning, calms her mind. She does not have the time to see her eyelids close – sooner than she can see, the borders of reality melt into a vision.

The vivid red of the tower she leans on starts flowing to her limbs, swift and purer than rain. Behind her closed eyes, she blinks; and when the vision shows her figure from the outside, she finds her dress is soaked in the same colour. 

She feels the fabric fall on her easily. Her fingers find a smooth texture. Her hat is painted anew, too, in a fiery contrast with her raven hair.

She follows her instinct, and spreads her arm in flight. The wind is glad to accept her new shape. She leads her foreign body into the currents, to land on the memory of a windmill she treasures from long, long ago.

The nest where she was born lay in a hidden angle of the rooftop. Her mother had taught her to always return there, for it was the safest place in the world. She looks for it, but it is gone – moved who knows where, by the inconstancy of sleep. 

The windmill is not the same as she remembers it. The small holes in the walls, the proving grounds she learnt to fly through, are replaced by the doors of the valley. She enters them one by one, to find her closest memories rearranged in the new architecture.

Ida always loved regular shapes, and the dream reminds her. It leads her in the middle of the sky, among the constellations she used to draw with her gaze, from the familiar warmth of her nest. From the beginning, she was drawn to the stars with a passion only known by the most daring birds.

She sees, transformed by the geometry, the towering buildings that destroyed her home. That was when she chose to flee to the woods, and start anew with those of her kind who still lived.

She walks on cubes and buttons, masked reminders of the woods. She was crowned head of her small family on top of the tallest oak tree. It was her only true safe haven, and, in the depths of her restless dream, she wonders if she will see it again.

There is a magical touch in everything she sees; her memories are tinged by the echo of her new colour, a bringer of warmth and light. Even from her dream, she feels the desire to cling to the beauty of her life, from start to finish.

Ida is almost done when her friend rises from the ground. He won’t abandon her, even in this. And it surprises her to find, when she frees herself from her nap, that she was resting on top of his head.

She caresses it lightly before she crosses the door. The inside of the passage is painted in bright, flaming red. She smooths her dress, and wonders.

There is light at the end of the corridor. There is an embroider of windows, painfully beautiful, opening on the vast expanse of the valley.

She lets the sunset fall on her, and paint the fabric of her clothes again. Red is the colour that gives her life; it helps her breathe wider, and holds the whole meaning of the dream that came to her.

Red is everything – her love for the past, and her longing for a future.


End file.
